Friday, February 22, 2013

AMOK is ostensibly the debut
album by Atoms for Peace, a new band featuring Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and the
Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea. But how do we know it’s not just a single? This
sounds like 10 remixes of the same song. A pretty great song, mind you—
glitchy, groovy and gorgeous in its own way, a song that would be a highlight
on any Radiohead album of the last 10 years or Yorke’s 2006 solo album, The
Eraser (the 2009 tour for which spawned this band—these guys obviously doesn’t
mind taking their time).

Atoms for Peace makes you think
it’s the job of the other guys in Radiohead to kick Yorke out of his ruts, to
ensure that a Radiohead album has a modicum of diversity. Even though Yorke is
hardly surrounded by yes men here—Flea, keyboardist and longtime Radiohead
producer Nigel Godrich, drummer Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.), Brazilian
percussionist Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Chili Peppers)—none of them bring
anything new to Yorke’s bag of tricks.

Those expecting to hear Flea
unleashed from his Chili Peppers template will be disappointed; he’s just
another ghost in this machine, where very few sounds are identifiably human-generated.
(Flea fans are advised to instead check his African collaboration with Damon
Albarn, Rocket Juice and the Moon, which came out this time last year.)

AMOK sounds fantastic and
features brilliant players. Maybe that’s all it has to be. (Feb. 28)

Download: “Before Your Very Eyes,”
“Default,” “Stuck Together Pieces”

Jill Barber -
Chansons (Outside)

Jill Barber, who
built a career moving from a folk singer to a retro jazzy chanteuse, says that
“singing in French has been
like rediscovering my voice, my instrument.” That’s not an exaggeration. Her
vocal timbre is perfect for Piaf’s native tongue, and she shows it off on this
collection of mid-century francophone songs. Having gone to great effort to
immerse herself in the language—spending a lot of time touring Quebec, and
living in France for a while—Barber inhabits this material naturally.

That’s only half
the appeal of this record, though: producer Drew Jurecka, plays violins,
accordion, clarinets, and saxophones, invites an all-star roster of Toronto
session musicians to play everything else, and captures it all in a
appropriately retro sonic sphere, staying true to the source material. Surely
it’s no fluke that Barber is putting out this love letter right before
Valentine’s Day. (Jan. 31)

“You grow old, and
you grow cold,” sings the 55-year-old Nick Cave here. Yet here he gives every
indication that he’s just heating up a third or fourth wave of his career.

What does Nick Cave
have left to say? The poet laureate of Biblical and perverse murder ballads has
explored the seamier side of life on 14 albums with the Bad Seeds, two each
with Grinderman and The Birthday Party, endless collaborations and various
other projects, including novels and screenplays—and, naturally, a musical
adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis for a Norwegian theatre company,
which is coming to Toronto in 2014.

There are moments
here where it sounds like Cave has everything and nothing at all left to say,
in a series of free-associative hallucinations that he admits he wrote after
“googling curiosities.” Why else would he rhyme “Hannah Montana” with “African
savannah” for no apparent reason, just before a missionary “saves the savages
with his Higgs Boson blues”? And why, in a different song, does he have “a
fetus on a leash”? One suspects that underneath his baritone gravitas, Cave is
mostly just yanking our chain and daring us to take him seriously.

What comes out of
Cave’s mouth here is nowhere near as important as what comes out of his
band—which, unlike the lyrical content, is entirely focused and very serious.
His guitar player of almost 40 years, Mick Harvey, recently split, opening up a
large hole in the Seeds’ sound. Cave and the remaining players fill the space
with ghostly organs, Warren Ellis’s haunting strings, and otherwise
unidentifiable ambience that sets this album far apart from much of Cave’s
discography, which relied on either whip-tight visceral tension or sombre piano
ballads. Bassist Martyn P. Casey is the musical anchor here, and nothing is
more ominous on this record than the rumbling, one-note bass line of “We Real
Cool.” It’s certainly more ominous than that ridiculous, un-Cave-like title.

Cave’s discography
is so vast that it’s easy for potential converts to excuse themselves from the
fray, and for loyalists to ignore a new album. But this is arguably one of only
three essential Cave albums in the last 20 years. Push Away the Sky—because
perhaps the sky is no longer the limit. (Feb. 21)

Nick Cave and the
Bad Seeds play a sold-out show at Toronto’s Massey Hall on March 23.

Download: “We No
Who U R,” “Jubilee Street,” “We Real Cool”

Doldrums – Lesser Evil (Arbutus)﻿

After the breakout success
of Grimes last year, her pal and Montreal neighbour Airick Woodhead, a.k.a.
Doldrums, has been picked as the next big thing to break out of that city’s
Arbutus Records label and avant-garde pop scene. And why not? For starters,
Grimes loaned Woodhead her laptop and took him on tour. But Woodhead is no naïf
in need of a helping hand: he spent seven years in the incredibly creative
teenage Toronto band Spiral Beach, he’s remixed no less of a legend than
Portishead, he’s produced tracks on Cadence Weapon’s astounding Hope In Dirt
City record, and he has two EPs credited to Doldrums that showed great promise.

So: why is Lesser Evil one
of the worst records I’ve ever heard not just this year, but in my life? It’s
not just disappointing coming from someone of Woodhead’s obvious talent. It’s
practically unlistenable: sitting through first single “She is the Wave” is
like enduring dental torture during a rave held in an active construction site.
Or, worse: every Skrillex track being played at once while an atonal drunk
sings over top of it. Good times!

The rest of the album isn’t
much better. Woodhead’s collage-based compositions show as much coherence as a
babbling meth addict; his synths clash and collide and appear to be either
constantly set to a random noise generator or distorted in the most abrasive
manner possible (and not in a good way). The beats and melodies are as flat as
Woodhead’s singing voice. It all sounds like Animal Collective on a
particularly bad day—which is saying something. This is ultimately masochistic
music—if you’re into that.

When Grimes locked herself
in her Montreal apartment to make Visions, she crafted a transcendent,
transgressive and joyous album that took the sound of isolation and insularity
and made something sensual and universal. When Woodhead locked himself in his
Montreal apartment—with the same computer, no less—he sounds like disappeared
down the darkest of holes and lost his mind completely. I hope Woodhead is
okay. After listening to Lesser Evil, I’m not sure I am. (Feb. 28)

Doldrums headline the
Arbutus Caravan Tour across North America, starting March 8 at the Majestic
Theater in Detroit.

Download: “Anomaly,” “Lesser
Evil,” “Lost in Everyone”

Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century
Ambassadors of Peace and Magic (Jagjaguwar)

There's nothing modern about Foxygen
at all, despite their album title. The most current reference point for these
San Franciscans is Pavement, complete with hipster-baiting slackerish vocals
(like their oft-quoted line, "You don't have to be an asshole / you're not
in Brooklyn anymore"). (Side note: the two 22-year-old men in Foxygen were
still in diapers when Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain came out.)
Otherwise, Foxygen mines both the dark and light sides of late '60s and '70s
psych pop, be it the Mamas and the Papas or Nuggets' garage bands, played with
a Stax Records soul shuffle and with big harmonies backing up a singer capable
of both detached Lou Reed drawl and Bee Gees' falsetto. Plus, Foxygen do the
unthinkable in this quantized age: the band routinely accelerates or drops
gradually into a half-time groove, which means there's no overdubbing here—this
is a real live rock'n'roll band. "The 21st century is going to kick your
ass, boy," they sing, but that's no reason not to revel in some distinctly
20th-century pleasures here. (Feb. 7)

Foxygen play Wrongbar in Toronto on
March 4.

Download: “Shuggie,” “No Destruction,”
“On Blue Mountain”

Veda Hille – Peter Panties (Independent)

In which Peter Pan is reimagined by a Vancouver songwriter—one who recently brought her
successful musical about Craigslist to Toronto—working with a playwright with
Down syndrome, a rock band consisting of 15-year-old boys, and two of
Vancouver’s most successful pop producers, with a song cycle that somehow ropes
in Macbeth, CSI and interpolations of classic songs by Bob Dylan, The Who and
the Grease soundtrack mixed into vibrant originals.

Make sense? Of course it
doesn’t—not outside its theatrical context, anyway, where even the most glowing
rave reviews of the show’s 2011 run in Vancouver (and there were many) admitted
that Peter Panties’ strengths had nothing to do with making sense beyond fusing
a beloved text with a modern-day tale of arrested growth (“Fuck that, no
moustache!”) and societal difference.

As a standalone record,
Peter Panties is curious, confounding and absolutely delightful. It opens with
just voice and piano singing, “I have a place where dreams were born”—though
whether that voice is Veda Hille’s or that of playwright Niall McNeil is
unclear, as the recording is androgynously pitch-shifted beyond clarity. McNeil
does appear on several jazzy improvisations with Hille, but this is a full cast
recording (with additional guests); the diversity of voices and vocal
arrangements go a long way to bringing the joyous and playful material to life.
We also hear Hille do things she rarely does, like deliver the kind of ripping
organ solo heard on "Mister Darling." [UPDATE: That solo is in fact played by 16-year-old Zak Youssef of the Bank Dogs.] Producers JC/DC—who were behind the boards
for the New Pornographers, Destroyer, Tegan and Sara and other Vancouver
classics—give everything the oomph of a large-scale Broadway show.

It’s been five years since
Hille released the triumphant This Riot Life, her most recent album not
associated with a theatre project or a commission. But as both Peter Panties
and the Craigslist musical illustrate, she continues to get even better as a
songwriter—which makes one marvel at what she’ll do next with an entirely blank
slate. (Feb. 28)

Veda Hille’s Craiglist
musical continues at Toronto’s Factory Theatre until March 3; it returns to
Vancouver for a month-long run on April 18 at Artsclub Theatre. Veda Hille
plays an extremely rare Toronto solo show on Monday, March 25 at the Music
Gallery.

Download: “Wendy Darling,”
“Mister Darling,” “Oh My God”

Hilotrons – At Least There’s
Commotion (Kelp)

"I know he's got the
hooks!" are the first words you hear on this record, over a whip-tight
smackdown of a drum beat, and emitted from a jerky, strangulated vocalist who
sounds like he's confessing under torture; almost immediately, a staccato synth
starts oscillating in ways not heard since Bernie Worrell in Talking Heads' Stop
Making Sense. No, the Hilotrons have never heard of you either, which is why
they open their first record in five years with all guns blazing and demanding
to be heard.

Kelp Records' head honcho, Jon
Bartlett, sent me the new record by this Ottawa band and claimed it was one of
the best records ever made in that town. Obviously he's biased. But he's also
right.

Our nation's capital often gets left
out of Canada's musical map; something Kathleen Edwards, Jim Bryson and The
Acorn have rectified in the last 10 years. During that time, the sparky new
wave Hilotrons have been plugging along, wowing the fellow musicians who form
their core audience, and scoring silent films in their plentiful spare time.
This is their fourth album and first in five years; it's safe to say that no
one who isn't a personal friend of bandleader Michael Dubue was waiting for it,
although 2008's very fine Happymatic appeared on the Polaris Prize long
list.

None of that particular context is
necessary to fall in love immediately with what is an instant classic of a
record. Dubue is the rare frontman who is also the keyboardist, and so his
records are full of synth sounds and pianos of every timbre, roped into a
rock'n'roll context by killer drummer Philip Shaw Bova, the only other musician
on this record (though there is vocal assistance from Ottawa's who's who:
Bryson, Jeremy Fisher, Lynn Miles, Snailhouse's Mike Feuerstack).

There are obvious influences from
late '70s fidgety new wave: Devo, Joe Jackson, XTC, Talking Heads. But with the
exception of the outright Kate Bush homage “Emergency”(itself a cover of local
Ottawa artist Yellow Jacket Avenger), this album carves its own path:
heartbreaking, space-age country balladry (“Not There Tonight”), punk rock with
AC/DC riffage (“Modern Way Woman”), '50s soul played on '70s synths (“My Number”),
the Cure-like “She Knows My Condition,” all transcending their origins and
ultimately sounding like no one else but the Hilotrons. The key is Dubue's
vocals, capable of operatic heights and delivered with a Freddie Mercury gusto
that precious few male vocalists in this country attempt (unless their name is
Hawksley Workman).

Amazing singer, great band (all two
of them), incredible sound and some killer songs: the Hilotrons will not be Ottawa's
secret any more. (Feb. 7)

The Hilotrons play March 2 in Ottawa
at the Hintonburg Public House, and March 26 at The Branch in Kemptville,
Ontario.

For the last decade, Jim James has
taken My Morning Jacket from a hushed, dreamy project into a powerhouse band
that is perhaps the finest live rock act in America right now—anchored as
always by James's choir-boy voice. His first album under his own name doesn't
have any shredding guitar solos or dramatic moments, but it isn't entirely a
retreat, either. James surrounds himself with psychedelic keyboards, strings,
heavy, syncopated drumming, and a mellotron set to a saxophone setting with
maximum tremolo—the latter an effect used sparingly but to wonderful effect.

Following My Morning Jacket’s excellent
2011 release Circuital, James is obviously now on a roll and uses the studio to
maximum effect, either in intimate moments or in the rare grandiose gesture,
and plays all the instruments himself. Much of the album creates a lilting
dream state set to an unusually funky, sparse backbeat, with James's aching,
soaring voice functioning as the curious, reassuring guide. James claims he was
inspired by a woodcut graphic novel from the 1920s called Gods' Man; more power
to him, as I'm sure the reference will go over the heads of at least 99 per
cent of his fans. But there is definitely a spiritual undertone here, one of
searching and questioning, which is likely why the music sounds so strange,
displaced and yet comforting at the same time.

After all those four-hour My Morning
Jacket shows and more than six studio albums, Jim James shows no sign of
running out of fresh ideas. (Feb. 7)

Veteran Vancouver
cellist and improviser Peggy Lee fronts an eight-piece jazz band where she exercises
her compositional chops. She’s a modest player: there are no showcase cello
solos here. Instead, she features the three horn players and avant-garde
approaches of her two guitarists, Tony Wilson and Ron Samworth. Long-time
right-hand-man, drummer Dylan van der Schyff, keeps things swinging, though for
every breezy melody there’s just as much time devoted to fidgety, beatless
improvisation, and it all works together seamlessly. Even if, like me, you’re
left cold by much of Vancouver’s prolific jazz scene revolving around the Drip
Audio label, Peggy Lee is a warm breeze. And hopefully we’ll be hearing an
album sooner than later from her duo with vocalist Mary Margaret O’Hara,
Beautiful Tool, which appeared at the Guelph Jazz Festival last year. (Feb. 21)

Download: “You Will
Be Loved Again,” “Why Are You Yelling?,” “Path of a Smile”

Justin Rutledge –
Valleyheart (Outside)

Justin Rutledge has
built an entire discography out of albums that get thrown on the stereo at 2
a.m. in 100-year-old hotel bars in small-town Ontario, in order to send heavy-lidded
drunks on their sleepy way home. This album is no different.

Part of what made
Rutledge’s last album, The Early Widows, such a revelation was Hawksley
Workman’s muscular production, some rousing choruses and even a tasteful use of
a gospel choir. Valleyheart is very much a retreat back to smaller pleasures,
where the sudden appearance of an electric guitar in a song like “Through With
You” threatens to throw the whole thing off balance. It’s too somnambulant to
win Rutledge any new fans, but it’s perfectly executed and, at the very least,
consistent—guaranteed not to startle any CBC Radio 2 programmers. (Feb. 14)

Download: “Out of
the Woods,” “Through With You,” “Downtown”

Ron Sexsmith –
Forever Endeavour (Warner)

How does Ron
Sexsmith, the songwriter who had an acclaimed documentary made about how
underappreciated he is, the man with a sad-sack face who writes sweet love
songs, the performer whose last album (Long Player Late Bloomer) was a bold,
Bob Rock-produced bid for the big time that garnered rave reviews and a spot on
the Polaris Prize shortlist—how does that very same Ron Sexsmith open up his
new album? By singing about how “there’s nowhere to go but down.”

Written after a
health scare, this record was made while Sexsmith was feeling more vulnerable
than usual, and there are few rainbows hiding behind the clouds he paints here
lyrically. It’s left to producer

Mitchell Froom, the
sonic architect of Sexsmith’s first three major-label albums on which he built
his reputation, to provide glimpses of sunlight. He does this not through the
bells and whistles of those early records, but by arranging elegant string
sections for almost every song, and judicious use of woodwinds, French horn and
brass. Sexsmith himself largely sticks to acoustic guitar. For a guy who, for
years, longed to be considered a pop artist rather than a folkie
singer/songwriter, Forever Endeavour is where Sexsmith fully embraces his early
’70s influences: part Nick Drake, part Harry Nilsson.

Ultimately, of
course, a Sexsmith album sinks or swims based on a particular set of songs.
Though this is a bit of a letdown after the stellar Long Player Late Bloomer,
it still shows a songwriter back on track after a series of albums that were
merely treading water for so great a talent. As he says on the best-titled
track here, “Me Myself and Wine,” “I’m making the most of my loneliness.”
That’s not an understatement. (Feb. 14)

Download: “If Only
Avenue,” “Me Myself and Wine,” “Sneak Out the Back Door”

Tannis Slimmon - In
and Out of Harmony (independent)

It doesn’t seem
like five years since Tannis Slimmon released her last album, but that’s
because the light of Guelph’s folk scene always seems to be around—her impeccable
voice part of the eternal soundtrack of that city.

And though she has
appeared on over 80 albums, you can count on less than one hand the ones that
bear her own name. The woman takes her time. Like her approach to harmony, she
doesn’t make an appearance until exactly the right moment. Which is why In and
Out of Harmony is an impeccable distillation of Slimmon’s many talents: not
just as a vocalist, but as a songwriter, an arranger and a curious musical
soul.

Created, as always,
with her long-time collaborator in life and song, Lewis Melville, there is
plenty here to separate Slimmon from, say, the Justin Rutledges of this
country. Though her voice is like a warm blanket, her lyrics earnest and her
songwriting rooted in traditional Canadian folk, very little else in her music
is predictable. Whether its her seamless integration of African instruments—she
and Melville have acted as a bridge to Canada for several musicians from
Mali—or the way she layers harmonies like early, eerie Joni Mitchell, or the way
Melville always places an odd instrumental juxtaposition or something slightly
off-kilter in the mix, Slimmon’s music is always working on several different
levels simultaneously. She gets plenty of ace help here from the likes of
former Rheostatics Martin Tielli and Dave Clark, as well as Western Canadian
guitar hero Bill Bourne.

Lyrically, Slimmon
is writing in a way that only a songwriter on the other side of 50 can,
confronting issues of mortality, stock-taking, redemption and acceptance.
Slimmon’s music has always had a healing effect even in happier times; it’s no
surprise that she delves into our darkest fears and comes back with empathy and
an eternal optimism. Being both deadly serious and taking pleasure in life’s
simplest joys are not mutually exclusive, and set to a soundtrack like this, anything
seems possible. (Feb. 14)

Download: “Good
News,” “Animals,” “One More Day”

Two Hours Traffic –
Foolish Blood (Bumstead)

Mo Kenney – s/t
(New Scotland/Pheromone)

Bands who specialize
in well-crafted, upbeat three-minute pop songs rarely find new inspiration with
10 years and three albums behind them. Yet P.E.I.’s Two Hours Traffic have
suddenly transformed from a decent, mid-level Canadian indie band into
architects of a classic pop masterwork, one that sounds like Spoon producing a
Nick Lowe album, like the New Pornographers’ A.C. Newman working with early
R.E.M. as a backing band. As songwriters, they pack these 10 songs with plenty
of ear-candy melodies, delivered with spot-on three-part harmony. As arrangers,
they work with producer Darryl Neudorf (Neko Case, 54.40) to ensure every
12-string rhythm guitar, every tambourine beat and every summertime harmony
enters the song at the right moment. The only other current band making music
like this and doing it this well is Vancouver’s Yukon Blonde; put those two on
a bill together and you have the ideal soundtrack to a summer sunset at a
lakeside venue.

Two Hours Traffic’s
first two albums were produced by Joel Plaskett, whose profile no doubt opened
many doors for the band. These days Plaskett is throwing his weight behind Mo
Kenney, a 22-year-old Nova Scotian he discovered while visiting a high school
music program five years ago.

Plaskett’s touch here
is subtle, even though he and Kenney are the album’s sole instrumentalists. The
tracks with little more than Kenney and her guitar prove that Plaskett didn’t
have to do much to highlight Kenney’s natural talent. She’s an accomplished
guitarist and her vocals fall somewhere between Mazzy Starr and Kathleen
Edwards (or, for those with fond memories of ’90s indie rock, Carol van Dijk of
Bettie Serveert), with a mix of youthful curiosity and premature
world-weariness (“The more I love, the less I know”). Musically, she moves with
ease from lo-fi power pop to eerie psychedelic folk, with hints of ’60s R&B
ballads.

Small wonder then,
that she moved serious amounts of merchandise as Plaskett’s opening act last
year, and is likely to have Ron Sexsmith fans snapping up even more when she
tours with him next month. (Feb. 21)

Two Hours Traffic
play Lee’s Palace in Toronto on March 21. Mo Kenney plays The Great Hall in
Toronto the same night.